LAWSUIT AGAINST LA MOCA AND VUITTON DISMISSED

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has tossed out one of Clint Arthur’s two class-action lawsuits alleging that the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and Louis Vuitton North America violated the Fine Prints Act, a California law that requires dealers in limited-edition art reproductions to certify their authenticity and provide information about how rare they are and how they were created. The Los Angeles Times reports that the ruling, by judge William Highberger, said that Arthur had no standing to sue the museum because he didn’t accept LA MoCA’s offer to refund the $2,655 he paid for three prints by Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami at the regular museum store. The separate federal case against Louis Vuitton concerns two different Murakami prints Arthur bought for $12,000 at an unusual special boutique the luxury-goods seller had set up in the midst of a 2007–2008 exhibition of Murakami’s works at the museum.

“To allow a purchaser to both keep his allegedly defective purchase and to get his money back . . . rewards opportunistic litigation (of which this case is a prime example),” Highberger wrote in his ruling last Friday. However, he said Arthur could file another suit “if a new and different set of facts exist at some future point in time,” such as LA MoCA not following through on its offer of a refund, or if it fails to provide “a legally adequate certificate.” The judge also denied the museum’s claim that it should be exempted from the Fine Prints Act because it is a charitable organization. Arthur said Tuesday that he would appeal.